Spirit Warrior: Peacock King

Synopsis

The shadows of the demons from the world's past are brewing up a plan for revenge upon the world full of light. When the world is in trouble, it's up to three people (an exorcist, his underling, and a half-demon) to save the world.

Review

The reason the synopsis is so small is because it is unrealistic to write the theme of this show without revealing one of the countless spoilers inside. It sounds a bit cliche because it is.

The plotline is like a massive collision of Yu Yu Hakusho: Poltergeist Report and the live action Indiana Jones film series. In short, the spiritual fighting, premise, and scenes of this anime are from the former while the object-that-eliminates-unchosen people is from an Indiana Jones film as is the fact that the Nazi Party has reformed (now as Neo Nazi, but as a group more focused on taking over the world with demons and evil spirits). The plot deviates from this at times, making the experience slightly less painful. As I said before, I can't mention any real plot elements because the plot is so full of spoiler details that it is relatively impossible to describe the anime and not give spoilers away.

Graphically, Peacock King really seems like a difference. The lighting is brilliant, the environment is nice, the characters look good, most things except for one main thing...the blood, which comes out as tons and tons of a shade of red that looks slightly transfused with Iodine. The animation for this is not perfect, but flows smooth and neat, with action coming at nice pace.

For the score, they seemed to have made nice planning beforehand, as the tracks are rather interestingly well-fit for the scenes, with the exception of the Neo Nazi theme, which sounds like some rejected music for a B-Movie (more Hal Warren than Edward Wood Jr.) that fused with a comic relief song from an RPG. The soundtrack did the tracks right so far except for that.

Character-wise, this anime only went into detail of about 5 characters (the main hero, his father, his sister, and two others) and left us wondering about everyone else. The voices sounded a slight bit nice, but left something to be expected. We have one master exorcist, an underling, the girlfriend of underling, priests, a mysterious family, and then some.

This anime is so hard to describe, it makes Virgin Fleet seem as simplistic as Pokemon. It could have been a five-star, but the full extent of it leaves something missing. Maybe it is the fact that the episodes are so long and dragging (the first episode spanning from Tibet and China all the way to San Francisco and Germany) that they stomp your attention span flat and have you sit there, waiting for it to end.

Spirit Warrior can be summed up in three words: Bog standard anime. — Jake L Godek

Recommended Audience: Only for really mature audiences since this anime takes a Go Nagai-type style for the plotline. Almost so unnecessary in appropriateness that it fits in nicely in the hentai region.